


look like hell

by TheImpalaClub



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, Race and Jack are bros and no one ever writes about it, World War I, help them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 15:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15270294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheImpalaClub/pseuds/TheImpalaClub
Summary: "You look like hell.""Still prettier than you."Jack and Race are best friends who know exactly how to help each other through Bad Times. Does not end well.





	look like hell

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many feelings about Race and Jack's friendship it's the most underrated thing anyway enjoy

Race sprinted the entire twenty blocks back to the lodging house when he heard the rumor. Some kid had escaped the Refuge by climbing into the governor's car while he was there for a photo op. Only one person was that stupid, and that brilliant, and he'd been arrested for the fourth time almost two months ago. Finally, Jack Kelly was back. It had been almost five years, because every time he got out someone would find him and come up with a reason to send him back. Race knew the guards were always looking for reasons to drag him back to the Refuge. When he'd been in there with him, three years ago, there wasn't a single night that Jack wasn't getting dragged out of the room by one of the guards or, god forbid, Snyder himself. Getting out of the Refuge for good was probably the best thing that had ever happened to the guy. He'd been trying for years. Now, it seemed like he'd done it.  
Race burst through the door, panting, and looked around for the nearest newsie. Romeo was just coming around the corner.  
"Where is he?" Race shouted.  
Romeo jumped. "Who? Jesus."  
"Kelly. He's back, isn't he? You expect me to believe someone else busted out of the Refuge in Roosevelt's car?"  
"Right." He gave Race a small grin. "He's upstairs. Crutchie's fixin' him up. Can't believe he's back."  
Race rolled his eyes and pulled a cigar out of his pocket, trying to hide his excitement. “Can't believe it took him so long."  
He'd never seen Jack so banged up. It had been a year and a half since any of the newsies had really seen him outside visits to the fire escape- since he was in hiding whenever he was out- and then it had been too dark to see how bad he was. Yellow bruises covered his arms. He was skinny enough that his shirt was hanging off his shoulder, and Race could see the burn marks there. Crutchie was bandaging his ankle. There were a few straight, white scars above his wrists that Race could tell weren't from the guards. His smile fell a little. As glad as he was to have his friend back, he could tell it was gonna be a while before the Jack Kelly everyone loved was completely back.  
"You look like hell," he said, just loud enough to get Jack's attention.  
Jack turned and smirked at him through a black eye and a split lip. "Still prettier than you."

 

When Jack came down from the roof, the strike was over and all the newsies that had made it out had found places to hide for the night. So he wandered the streets for a while, almost hoping one of Snyder's guys would find him. At least then someone would be between Snyder and Crutchie. It was his fault, anyway. The least he deserved was getting thrown back into hell.  
He rounded a corner and found a familiar face curled in a doorway. Race. Despite everything, a smile twitched across his face. A line of smoke trailed out of the doorway and up through the fire escapes.  
Race grinned around his cigar when he saw Jack. For a second Jack couldn't think why, and then he remembered what the day had started as. Of course Race looked excited, despite the purple bruise on his jaw, and the gash on his forehead that left a trail of dried blood down the side of his face, and the ankle that looked like it was at the wrong angle to be walked on. They weren't scared kids trying to make enough money to last the night anymore. They were a union. They'd planned a strike, and for a second it had worked.  
Jack sat on the step next to Race. The top of the Refuge was barely there, but still looming on the horizon. The hope that had built up in the past seconds dissipated. Crutchie was stuck there. The kid couldn't even walk, much less fight back if the guards decided to do anything to him.  
And Race may have been smiling, but he was still hurt. All the newsies were. Everything was his fault. If he'd been a little more careful, or careful at all, they'd never have been in this mess in the first place.  
"You look like hell," he said, allowing his voice to break.  
"Still prettier than you." Race threw his arm around Jack's shoulders. For once, neither of them could think of anything else to say.

 

The strike was long over, and Snyder was already on his way to getting arrested or at least controlled, but the nightmares that the ordeal brought were still in full swing. Not just for Race, who gave up on trying to sleep through the night after two solid weeks of closing his eyes and seeing nothing but hazy images of cops and blood and Spot, who he'd finally convinced to join, getting the shit kicked out of him on Medda's stage. The entire lodging house had become a sleepless place.  
Since the strike, it was a miracle if Jack even came back for the night. Usually he wandered the streets, or stayed in the theater painting, anything to keep him awake. None of the newsies said anything. It wasn't the first time he'd gone months without more than an hour or so a night, and it probably wouldn't be the last.  
It was three weeks after the whole ordeal had ended that Race finally put two and two together. Katherine made a passing comment about Snyder being there the night Jack had spent in Pulitzer's basement, and even though he'd known it before something finally clicked and made his stomach drop. How had he not seen it sooner? Jack had only acted like this a few times before, and they all lined up with his releases from the Refuge.  
That night Race followed him to the theater. He climbed up to the flies for a while and watched Jack paint. He stopped only to go make another pot of coffee in Medda's dressing room. By midnight Jack’s hands were shaking so hard that paint went the opposite direction it was supposed to on the backdrop. Jack cursed and threw his brush across the stage. Then he noticed Race sitting above him and jumped back with a yelp.  
Catching Jack with his guard down, Race could see just how tired the guy really was. His eyes were bloodshot and hidden behind dark shadows. Every muscle in him was tensed.  
“You look like hell,” Race said softly.  
“St-still prettier than you.”  
Race just nodded. 

 

Jack knew it was inevitable. He knew the second Race had burst onto the roof like a firework eight months ago that he and Spot were gonna get in trouble, that neither of them had the slightest idea how to be inconspicuous, that the streets of Brooklyn weren’t gonna take them kindly, but he tried not to say anything. His friend was in love. He wasn’t going to ruin that.  
Jack knew it was bound to happen, but it didn’t make it any easier when Race rushed into the theater basement, tripping down the stairs, his face soaked in blood.  
He’d seen Race scared and hurt before, but he’d never seen the look on his face as he collapsed, out of breath, next to Jack’s latest painting.  
Whoever had soaked Race had taken Spot. Jack could tell, if only because Spot hadn’t followed his boyfriend down the theater stairs. He walked away to find something to clean Race’s face with; everything in the basement had paint on it. And he didn’t let himself think about how the Brooklyn newsies were gonna need a new leader the next day, or how what had happened wouldn’t even be news, how no one was going to give a shit that a nobody kid had gotten murdered just for holding his boyfriend’s hand on the street.  
He found some towels and filled a bowl with water. When he came back, Race was sitting with his knees to his chest in the middle of the floor, and tears had tracked clean streaks through the blood on his face.  
“You look like hell,” Jack whispered, kneeling in front of him.  
Race choked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Still prettier than you.”

 

It took an entire month. Thirty agonizing days of spending every night counting cents to see if they finally had enough for a doctor, of alternating two hour shifts through the night so someone was awake if anything got worse (and arguing when Jack tried to take every shift), of updates whispered through the line for papes. It took an entire month, but the ball finally dropped, and one night a scream from Finch woke everyone up to a world without Crutchie.  
Jack wouldn’t even look at the body. He just silently climbed out the window and up to the roof and stayed there for two and a half weeks. Romeo tried to get him to come down, at least for the funeral, but he wouldn’t budge. Finally, when the air froze solid between the buildings of Manhattan and the weather reports in the papes started talking about snow, Race decided it was up to him. He was already busy mourning Crutchie, on top of Spot, and he knew neither him nor the other newsies could take another loss. Especially Jack. If Jack went, they’d have another death and a regime change to deal with. And Race knew he was next in line now that Crutchie was gone, and he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d seen what Jack could do, how he could talk anyone down from any kind of edge, how there was no problem too big or too small, how he could always find an empty bed for a new kid or food for someone who didn’t have any or supplies for the kids at the Refuge. Race couldn’t do that. Not as well as Jack could, anyway.  
The roof was freezing, but Jack didn’t seem to notice. He was curled in the corner, scribbling furiously on a scrap of paper. An empty whiskey bottle sat next to him. Race couldn’t imagine where he’d even got it. He wrapped his arms around his chest and walked towards the corner, blowing a cloud into the almost-winter air.  
“Hey,” he called.  
Jack flinched and looked up. Two and a half weeks of tears were dried on his face.  
“You look like hell,” Race said, sitting down in front of Jack.  
The taller boy buried his face in Race’s shoulder. “Still prettier than you,” he muttered. 

 

At some point Jack had gotten used to the constant sound of gunshots, and the mud of the trenches, and the fear that gripped him like a hand around his throat, and he couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. Because he had stopped thinking about any of it, but now he thought maybe the world could really end and he wouldn’t care. He didn’t like that.  
He had Race, though, fighting next to him. That made him feel a little more human.  
They’d been stuck in a trench together for weeks, ducking under bullets and firing their own guns and Jack was hoping to god he hadn’t killed anyone because he didn’t even want to come in the first place. He’d tried to dodge, but Davey and Catherine had given him lectures (one each individually, then one where they teamed up, the bastards), and Race had gone, so he’d given in. Now he was wishing he hadn’t.  
He had letters from everyone back home, in his pocket. Race did, too. If one came for both of them they played rummy for it. Race had a lot more letters, because of that. For a few weeks, there’d been ones that came addressed to the two of them and Romeo, and Elmer. Those ones had stopped after Davey got the telegrams.  
His other pocket had a sketchbook and a pencil. The first half of the book was filled with portraits of Crutchie- from before he’d been drafted. He didn’t let himself draw him out here.  
Another gunshot. Jack didn’t even hear it.  
What he did hear was a scream next to him, and someone hit the ground, and somehow he knew who it was before he could get himself to turn around and confirm it.  
There were already people crowded around Race, holding his jacket tight against his shoulder like a finger in a dam, helping him onto a stretcher. Jack barely got to look at him as they maneuvered the stretcher through the trench, but his eyes were shut and his jaw was tight and Jack got too good of a picture of what that face would look like staring up from a coffin.  
“Higgins!” he shouted over the noise of the battlefield. “You look like hell.”  
He didn’t hear the response.


End file.
